1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a high-speed personalization machine, more particularly a personalization machine for documents, such as passports, containing an electronic chip.
2. Related Art
Personalization machines are known for portable items such as chip cards and in particular so-called “smart” cards, i.e. which incorporate a microprocessor or microcomputer. With these machines it is possible to record information derived from a computer system into the memory of a card microprocessor, the chip card before personalization being blank without any marking and not being pre-selected. After personalization, the machine conducts a follow-up operation of the personalized card to print or mark the card plastic with detector information. These chip cards communicate with the outside world via contact or contactless terminals depending upon applications requiring greater or lesser security. However, these high speed personalization machines do not allow personalization of electronic chips incorporated in an identity document such as a passport, whose personalization information is directly related to masked or printed information already contained in the document. In this case, the personalization machine must conduct an identification operation of the item incorporating the electronic chip before personalization to avoid any writing error of personalization data in an electronic chip not corresponding to the content of the document in which the chip is inserted.